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China’s Top Internet Moments of 2013

This was the year China’s Communist Party moved to exert its will on the Internet.

After a legendary 2012, in which the country’s masters of online satire skewered authorities with one biting meme after another, the new leaders in Beijing apparently decided they weren’t going to take the same beating as their predecessors. New laws were passed. Liberal-leaning celebrity microbloggers were attacked, humiliated and intimidated.

And yet, like a local official who gets dismissed for corruption then turns up in another province with a better job, the Chinese Internet lives on. While 2013 can’t compete with 2012 in sheer volume of viral content, what did spread online was often weirder and, in the case of politics, sharper and shrewder.

China’s New ‘It’ Girl: Grandpa

Technically, Liu Qianping and his willowy legs started burning up the Internet runway in late 2012, but he was still going strong when the new year dawned, so we’re including him here. And let’s face it, any 72-year-old ex-rice farmer who can rock women’s clothes like this deserves another turn in the spotlight. Mr. Liu, who shot to fame after his granddaughter used him as a stand-in model for her online clothing store, is our favorite example of one of our favorite Chinese phenomena: elderly people doing outlandish things because they’ve been through enough for eight lifetimes and just don’t give a damn anymore. With China’s society aging rapidly, we could be entering a golden era for this sort of thing.

The Harlem Shake With Chinese Characteristics

The Harlem Shake was the biggest viral phenomenon to sweep the Internet in the wake of Gangnam Style and hence drew inevitable comparisons with the YouTube record-breaker (as well as inevitable mashups). China Real Time isn’t sure the Harlem Shake deserves to be in the same conversation as Gangnam, but it gets mention here because it caught on relatively early in China, where it was known as the “Loser Dance” and because, once again, it inspired elderly Chinese people to cut loose in ways that made us yearn for old age (see above).

Pork Soup in the Huangpu

In early March, residents outside Shanghai noticed an unusual addition to the flotilla of refuse that typically sullies the Huangpu River and its tributaries: dead pigs. More than 12,000 of them. Despite fears the drinking water for China’s financial hub could be contaminated, Internet users managed to have fun with the hogwash, creating “Life of Pig” movie poster mash-ups (h/t Beijing Cream) and cracking jokes about lucky Shanghai residents drinking pork soup directly from their taps. Here’s hoping a new deal to import $74 million in top quality “porcine semen” from the U.K. will ensure pork broth of a tastier sort in the future.

Headmaster, Step Away From the Children

It happens in every country: Adults abuse their authority to take advantage of children. But in China, sex offenders in positions of power often take advantage of a legal loophole that allows them to be charged with “sex with an underage prostitute” – a crime that carries lesser penalties than child rape. In June, fed up with a string of such cases – including one involving a school principal – Chinese activist Ye Haiyan uploaded a photo of herself holding a sign that said “Headmaster, get a room with me. Let your students go.” She was soon joined by others, including artist Ai Weiwei, who scrawled the message on his generous midsection. Ms. Ye was later evicted from her home in what supporters said was revenge for her high-profile protests against child abuse, but the campaign appears to have had an effect: In December, China’s highest court said it would take steps to strengthen the penalties for those found guilty of sexually abusing children.

Tank Man Revisited

Sina Weibo

If there’s one time when Chinese Internet authorities don’t mess around, it’s on June 4, the anniversary of the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown. As in years past, the censors were out in force, but that didn’t keep social media’s politically minded pranksters from commemorating the day. With keywords and code words all effectively blocked, they turned to Photoshop, altering images of the iconic Tank Man photo using various absurd stand-ins for the tanks. China Real Time’s favorite made use of the enormous inflatable yellow duck that occupied Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbor for much of the spring, but there were others. Searches for the term “big yellow duck” were eventually blocked on Sina Weibo.

500 Reposts

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In an effort to give their suppression of criticism and dissent online a veneer of legality, Chinese authorities in September issued a new legal interpretation that criminalized a whole range of online activities. Among the new rules: Anyone who posts rumors or slanderous content that attracts at least 5,000 hits or is reposted at least 500 times risks charges of defamation and as many as three years in jail. Social media users instantly began forwarding a new slogan: “If you love someone, repost him. If you hate someone, repost him, too.” Government social media accounts post unlikely stories are now routinely inundated with comments as soon as they crest 500 reposts.

Treading on the Tuhao

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If there was one word that ran away with the Chinese Internet this year, tuhao (土豪) is it. The first character means “dirt” or “local” and the second means “despotic” or “unrestrained.” The term originally referred to rich landowners, the target of Communist ire in the first half of the 20th century. Lately, it’s taken on another meaning, translated by some as nouveau riche and others “the uncouth wealthy.” Though it’s been around for a while, the term gained extra currency this year with the release of the gold iPhone 5s, referred to in China as the tuhao jin (or tuhao gold). There are also tuhao marriage proposals and tuhao weddings. There may even be an entry for tuhao in the Oxford English Dictionary — a development that has led to conflicted feelings in a country that craves international influence but feels a little bit ashamed of the way some of its wealthiest citizens comport themselves.

Government Fills the Viral Void

Toward the end of the year, with the new rules squeezing the life out of Weibo and other social media sites, many Internet users retreated to the semi-privacy of mobile chat app WeChat. The government happily stepped into to fill the vacuum. On November 9, the fire department in Qinghuangdao, in Hebei province, came out with a fire-safety dance video set to the Korean pop hit “Bar Bar Bar” by Crayon Pop. On Dec. 2, National Traffic Safety Day in China, police in Huizhou, in Guangdong province, did the same to promote traffic safety. Credit where credit is due: Both videos racked up the views, and proved that, despite appearances, not everyone inside the government is befuddled by the Internet.